


The Body Building Centre

by DragonaireAbsolvare



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Comedy, Crack, Dark Harry, Devil worship, Fluff, Good Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Good Tom Riddle, Humor, M/M, Mentor Voldemort (Harry Potter), Mentor/Protégé, Romance, Tom is a Sweetheart, body building AU, gymnasium, luna means well, working out, xenophilius runs a cult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27203174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonaireAbsolvare/pseuds/DragonaireAbsolvare
Summary: Harry is a waif on the streets, a runaway orphan picked up by the Lovegoods and working at an incineration plant. It's just his luck that he finds a body building centre round the corner.Or, the bodybuilding AU in which Tom deserves more love, Bellatrix and Luna are A+ friends, Harry is a vengeful simpleton and Xenophilius is a dastardly con-man who’s pretending to be a cult-leader.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	The Body Building Centre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themagicmuffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themagicmuffin/gifts), [Ellionne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellionne/gifts).



> An old prompt in CoS  
> Prompt by themagicmuffin: Tom realises that he greatly misinterpreted what a body-building trainer is.  
> Add On by Ellionne: What do you mean when you say you don’t do Necromancy? What are you doing with the bodies you’ve helped to build? Perverts!!!
> 
> I confess I've taken a lot of creative liberties with the prompt. I know nothing of western satanism.

Harry was wandering aimlessly down the beachside streets (avoiding the Dursleys for as long as he could) just like the antisocial delinquent he was rumoured to be, when he caught sight of it.

‘Body Building Centre, 2nd Floor, Fide Building, South Beach Road.’

It was a large vinyl advertisement board, but Harry quickly pulled out his little notepad and jotted down the address zealously, then fled to the Rook, a shady establishment in Knockturn Alley. He hurriedly greeted the barmaid and took the flight of steel stairs to the basement.

Luna was sitting on the sofa, painting. “Oh, hullo, Harry.”

Harry grinned, a wicked gleam dancing in his eyes. “I’ve found it, Luna. A body building workshop.”

Luna’s pale eyes went wide- “Show me, please.” She demanded, and they looked up the address on the internet.

“Morsmordre Body Building Centre.” They chorused, looking at each other.

“Morsmordre.” Luna said, awed. “To bite Death. Someone who eats Death- a soul eater? A demon!”

Harry gaped. That wouldn’t have been a coincidence. A demon, running a body building workshop? There was nothing more to be done than to sign up and worship the being for whatever they were. Luna thumped him on the back and they eagerly sent an email to the website address.

Just then, Xenophilius Lovegood walked down the basement and announced a clean-up of the place. There was a ritual to be done at nine in the evening, and the sofas and bicycle parts had to be put away. Luna gingerly carried her painting of Mammon Rising to the basement’s annex storage room, and Harry pushed the furniture to the side, covering them in black canvas.

Xenophilius sent Luna to collect the salt and bone-candles, and then began to work on the ritual circles with Harry.

“Great Teacher.” Harry began. “I’ve found a place that teaches body-building.”

Xenophilius stared blankly for a moment, before regaining his senses. “Brother Harry,” he began mysteriously. “I would advise you not to dabble in such dark deals. This ‘body-building’ may not be what our brethren is looking for. Perhaps, if you accidently reveal the nature of our craft, they might even call the police.”

Harry bit his lips. The place was called Morsmordre, for a reason. It had to be run by demons. And if he was lucky, he could even snag a contract with the demons to murder the Dursleys’ in their sleep. The benefits outweighed the risks, and the Great Teacher had once admitted that he too could make mistakes.

The Teacher was only human after all.

The rest of the brethren gathered at nine, and they prayed to the Lord of the Flies to grant them powers, and then summoned the invisible Nargle spirits to wreak havoc on the lives of enemies. Xenophilius slit a fowl’s throat and drained the blood into a skull chalice, along with salts and filled the ritual goblet set aside for the Heliopath Lord.

What remained in the skull chalice was passed it along for the brethren to partake, and each of the hooded, red-robed members took a sip of the blood. Finally, the remaining blood was mixed with ground sulphur and poured into a small bonfire, to release the cleansing fumes.

The ritual done, they began to engage in idle chatter, and Harry knelt before his teacher for permission to talk. He then rose, and addressed the gathering.

“My brothers and sisters soul-bound, it is with the greatest sorrow that I report our failure in finding the demonic plane. It was not in the sewers, however large the gathering of insects there were.” Upon this melancholy report, a few of the brethren began cursing. It was no secret that they had been looking forward to access the demonic plane, and return to their rightful places in Hell.

Xenophilius gently laid a chemical-stained hand on Harry’s hooded head, and patted him benevolently. “Fret not, my child. The Demonic realm is not easy to find. I forgive your failure. We will persevere- for our Lord cast us out with a purpose. When we have served it, we will return. In the meantime, we shall try to hide our true existences and follow the will of Lucifer, to perpetuate his great deeds and whisper sin in the ears of our fellow humans.”

The brethren applauded, and then Sister Luna revealed her newest paintings- of Wrackspurts kindling the vitriolic fires of Hell, Sister Nymphadora spoke of mischief invoked in the streets, and the Teacher stood up to disperse them all, lighting the salt circles and anointing the members’ foreheads in sacred oils.

When the ‘ritual’ was over, Xenophilius winced at the scent of his ‘sacred oil’, which was nothing more than the formaldehyde he had nicked from his day-job as a coroner. He bade his daughter to waft away the fumes through the vent, while Harry put away the ritual articles until the next meeting. They had dinner together, after which Harry asked if he could kip with them for the night.

It was usual for Harry, who lived in the apartment nearby, to stay at the Lovegoods’ to escape his abusive relatives. The Lovegoods (and Harry) lived together in the basement of the Rook and its attached bar, although the bar’s owners and its patrons despised the mere sight of the three misfits.

Xenophilius worked as a coroner in neighbourhood and occasionally wrote stories for a weekly magazine while Harry and Luna worked part-time at different places to pay the basement’s overpriced rent. For Xenophilius, whose youthful aspirations as a magician had taken a poor turn, the only other option was to use his _other_ skills- his imagination and a flair for theatre and start a demonic cult.

Yep, Xenophilius was a fraud.

_He_ didn’t believe in what he spoke, but he was a very good story-teller, and could enchant a crowd easily.

The cult business was only too easy- people wanted to believe they were special, and being told they were demon offspring who would be called back to Lucifer’s palace in Hell certainly counted as ‘special’. Soon enough, the Quibbler had three dozen patrons, and was getting a little stuffy in Xeno’s old apartment, which was when they sold it and moved to the basement of the Rook. The patronage was generous enough to complement their income while saving up for Luna’s college tuition- and Harry was more of a blessing than a nuisance.

Luna had always wanted siblings, and Harry wanted a welcoming home. They were such good, innocent kids; even going around recruiting and spreading the word about the Quibbler-

It was a pity that his darling Luna and the poor, naïve Harry had fallen to his tales; but Xeno wasn’t doing anyone harm, was he? When the overzealous members started talking about thievery and murder, Xenophilius stopped them, using the excuse of ‘hiding their existence in the Human World’ and it worked.

Mostly.

When someone actually committed a crime, Xenophilius promptly excommunicated them. It wouldn’t do to have the police sniffing about and discovering pickled organs and dangling skulls in his basement. The rest of the brethren understood.

The Great Teacher was dissatisfied with their ‘treachery’ to the coven, and the risk of discovery kept their mouths shut, and the fear of Lucifer’s wrath kept the cash flowing in.

What Xenophilius didn’t know was that Harry and Luna were much deeper into this whole underground cult gimmick; and that the only reason they hadn’t been traced so far was because Luna would track the traitorous ex-member and Harry would piously slit their throats and offer their blood and powdered bone to the Heliopath Lord.

The remains were then disposed of in the city’s incineration plant, where Harry worked part time shifts loading the incinerator hoppers, adding merely a name to the ever-growing list of missing persons pinned to the police station noticeboard.

***

So, with Luna’s blessings, Harry sauntered into the body building centre on the second floor of the Fide building.

There was a lot of equipment- heavy, serious-looking machinery which was probably what built the body. He had initially assumed they would be doing it the traditional way, with a doctor sewing together chunks of flesh and a necromancer giving it life. But well, that’s industrialisation for ya!

Press a button, pull some levers and voila! A brand new body, ready for use!

Although, he still expected a necromancer to be employed.

“Er, I’m here to sign up for a body-building session.” Harry said, stomping down his excitement so as to not scare away the man at the reception desk.

“No probs, just go in and you’ll find Vol-D, he can set up a schedule suitable for you.”

“Vol-D?”

The man stared. “Y’know, Voldemort? He runs the place.”

“Ah!” Harry said, as if those words meant something to him. Well, they did- Voldemort literally meant Flight of Death. Someone whom Death flees from.

In other words, a literal immortal!

Damn yes, this was the opportunity of a lifetime that he had been waiting for. A fucking _immortal,_ for Nargles’ sake!

Harry beamed, and if looks could kill, his beam of joy would have obliterated that reception counter. He spun on his heels and headed inside, looking for the Immortal Voldemort.

A trainer mentioned that he could find the immortal at the bench-press, and Harry stopped in his tracks at the sight of the owner.

Voldemort was- overwhelming, at first sight.

At a towering six feet five, the head trainer loomed over Harry menacingly. He had been warned that Voldemort ran his workshop like a tyrant, but nothing could prepare Harry for the sheer demonic awesomeness the immortal exuded. He was incredibly pale, with red eyes and not a trace of hair on his broad, muscly body.

“Hi, how can I help you?” Voldemort asked, his voice rough and gravelly like Satan himself had crawled from Hell.

That was no mere immortal.

Voldemort was perfection itself, a demon prince lording over the realms of Netherhell.

Harry stood cowed, worshipful. “I come to seek thy tutelage, Master!” He sobbed. “I long to learn to build bodies.”

Voldemort smiled pleasantly. “You’ve come to the right place then.” The demon then rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he assessed Harry. “You’re a little scrawny but no worries, I can whip you into shape in no time.”

Whip?

Oh hell, what a _demon._

Harry shivered in delight. He was really going to be trained by an actual demon! He gazed earnestly at the demon and nodded, jotting down everything the immortal said. They made up plans to start Harry’s training at five in the morning every day, and end by seven so that he could get to his morning shift in time.

The young man fled to Xeno’s basement and threw himself into his sworn sister’s arms.

“He’s a demon.” Harry gasped, face flushed with exertion and manic joy. “A real hell-spawn. A _lord.”_

Luna stared, face barely shifting from its permanently surprised look. “A demon lord?”

“Yep. And he’s going to train me.”

They spun on the wooden floor like children on nitrous oxide, and that was how Xenophilius found them.

“Oh, daddy, Harry’s found a real demon!”

Xenophilius stared, gobsmacked. “And you believe that, darling?” He asked.

Luna smiled serenely. “Of course. Now we can make sacrifices directly.” She spun again. “What’s his Lordship’s name, Harry?”

“Voldemort. The one Death flees from. A true immortal.” He breathed wondrously. Xenophilius looked like he regretted some choices he had made in his life.

And that was how the Coven of the Quibblers found themselves a new deity to worship and make sacrifices to.

***


End file.
